Rainy days

"But we love the sun. We want to wear sandals and nice dresses."

1. I'm not a fan of some people in the medical profession still using "we" if they really mean me. It's not as rampant anymore, but you still hear it and it annoys me. Sometimes if I'm not in a nice mood, I will for example ask if "we" means that I also get to draw their blood.
If one of them then goes as far as using "we" meaning themselves and telling me that "we" love the sun when I'm very obviously suffering - that particular conversation took place during an extremely hot summer day, my head was about to explode and I felt like falling over any minute - it's very hard for me not to snap at them. I have always struggled with heat.
There is no categorical "we" for taste or feelings, no "everyone" or "no one", no "always" or "never".

I still remember that so well, it was the long
awaited relief on a very hot August day.

2. I don't love the sun. I'm very much a child of the shadows and of rain and always have been (and have mentioned it more than once on this blog, sorry).

Today (meaning the day I'm writing this) is a very grey and rainy and darkish day and I absolutely love it, not just because I'm inside and cozy under a blanket with two sleeping cats to keep me company.
There is a neologism for that now ... pluviophile, "someone who finds joy and peace of mind during rainy days".
Although there seem to be more people now who are ready to admit that they are pluviophiles, there are a lot of people who don't seem to be able to accept that. They don't understand how anyone can be happy on a grey day and I've ben told more than once that it's impossible (just as it's obviously impossible to feel good about it getting dark earlier and hating DST).
Isn't it funny how someone else knows so much better how I feel than I do myself? 😶

Please forgive me if you've heard the following story before - because I sure like to tell it - or just skip it.
The first time I noticed loving rain was in school. I know it was in first or second grade because of the ground floor classroom we were in, so I was 5 or 6.
It was in summer and suddenly it got really dark because of a thunderstorm, but I didn't get scared at all. Instead it felt incredibly cozy, the dark classroom, the thunder, and the wonderful sound of rain.

Now you may argue it's easy to like rain if you don't have to be in it. Let's say it's easiER. I don't mind walking in rain and people are usually more shocked about my getting wet than I'm myself. I don't use umbrellas because I'm notorious in forgetting them and also I don't like holding them (as mentioned before). It has been a long time argument with the family who thinks I'm just being stubborn (which is true, but doesn't have anything to do with this).
But yes, of course it's still nicer to sit somewhere or hang out on my bed and listen to rain. There are so many sounds depending on how strong it is and what surface it falls onto and all of them are lovely to me - if I can be sure it won't come through a ceiling (had one or the other flat roof experience, never in my own flat, though), turn into hail or cause flooding which is really scary, but then all natural disasters are.
Listening to rain calms me down, even puts me to sleep. I have a small noise machine which is always set on "rain". Keep your babbling brook (although that would be my second choice), your crackling campfire, your wind or even the singing birds (because that is very much a morning sound to me). Give me rain.

Picture via pxhere

Then there's the smell.
You might have heard of petrichor before, the "earthy scent produced when rain falls on dry soil", a term coined in 1964.
Some scientists believe that humans appreciate that scent because water has always been important for survival.
(Are you interested in "scents and sensibility"? No, that's not one of my bad puns, it's from a BBC article sparked by a TikTok debate about "who can smell it better, Americans or Europeans".)

Soil being hit by a raindrop (public domain on Wikipedia)

Rain changes smells. The first one coming to mind for me are wet dogs (no rain on my inside cats) which I don't really mind.
One that really stuck out, though, was the smell in the underground station from where I took the local train after work, but only directly after or during rain. It was slightly chemical, my guess is that the ties had probably been treated with something like creosote?
Actually, there is a bush called creosote bush which is said to smell like rain.
I have no idea if that's the answer, at any rate that smell wasn't unpleasant to me at all. Don't judge. I only waited there for one or two minutes tops and didn't sniff my way along the tracks.
There are two long stairways down to the station and the smell usually hit me coming round the corner to go down the second one and then got stronger, but not overwhelmingly so.
Weirdly enough, I don't remember it smelling quite the same when I came to work, but maybe that was because I had already been in the tunnel? I didn't notice it on the train, though, neither to work nor from work.
Anyhow, I always got a warm, fuzzy feeling although my head told me that this couldn't be healthy. I guess it symbolized that the day was over and I was on the way home.

I created more than one rain related item over the years, from polymer clay or beads for example. However, I was never really happy with them and ripped them all up again.
For this post, I had started to make another one, but when I had already come quite far with it, it just didn't look like my vision. I want to try a different approach eventually, but my crafting time has become limited and my list is so long!

So, what about you? Do you like rain?